In periodizing the history of Ukrainians in the
Western diaspora after the Second World War, it is useful to make two
large divisions. The first, which I call the Postwar Emigration, lasts
from the mid-1940s through the 1970s. It is a period in which the
leading political and cultural actors were ЋmigrЋs from Ukraine, the
chief activity institution building, and the political context the Cold
War. The second began in the 1980s, and I call it the period of the
Diaspora. It was at this time that the diaspora began to refer to
itself as such,[1]
perhaps partly because now the ЋmigrЋs from Ukraine began to depart
from the scene and the leadership of the community passed to men and
women who were already born in the West. Other characteristics of the
second period are the decline of Ukrainian community institutions,
concern with collective memory issues such as the famine of 1932-33 and
the behavior of Ukrainians during World War II, and the emergence of an
independent Ukrainian state. This paper is concerned with the earliest
subdivision of the first period, i.e., the late 1940s, when most of the
postwar emigration consisted of displaced persons (DPs) in Europe,
especially Germany.

The problem under investigation is how did this
postwar emigration imagine the transition from totalitarianism. The
ЋmigrЋs had just experienced both Soviet and Nazi rule, both in their
most virulent stages. They themselves had been deeply influenced by the
totalitarian impulses of the age. Now Nazi Germany had been defeated,
and they had been delivered from the hands of the Soviets. They now
claimed to condemn both totalitarianisms. How did they imagine that
they would evolve into a post-totalitarian community, living in exile
within democratic states? How did they understand the future
deliverance of their homeland from Soviet totalitarianism? As far as I
know, this study is the first to ask and attempt to answer these
questions, and I hope that this compensates for the rather fragmentary
and exploratory research on which it is based.

The study focuses on the largest players in the
early postwar emigration: the nationalists from Western Ukraine and the
revolutionary democrats from Central and Eastern Ukraine. According to
a report written by Robert F. Kelley for the United States Army, there
were about 3.5 million Ukrainians in Western Europe at the end of World
War II. The majority were Central and Eastern Ukrainians who had ended
up in Germany either as POWs or Ostarbeiter. But most of these were
repatriated, often forcibly, to the Soviet Union, and many of those who
managed to remain in the West maintained a low profile or passed as
Galician Ukrainians. By 1950, Kelley estimated, Galicians made up 55
percent of the Ukrainian emigrants. The largest political group among
them was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists headed by Stepan
Bandera (OUN-B). Perhaps 75-80 percent of the displaced persons from
Galicia sympathized with the OUN-B. The party itself claimed 6500-7000
members in the US zone of occupation and 3500-4000 in the British.
Their rivals said these claims were exaggerated and conceded only 1500
members in all of Germany, and Kelley accepted their estimate. There
were also an estimated 150 active members in the rival Melnyk
organization (OUN-M). The Lebed group, which split off from the Bandera
group in 1948, was "the smallest of the three."[2] The political scientist Vasyl Markus
much later arrived at the following estimates. There were about
8-10,000 political activists in the DP camps and another 15,000
sympathizers, financial contributors, and readers of the party press,
together accounting for about 12-15 percent of the total ЋmigrЋ
population. At the end of 1948 OUN-B had 5000 members in Western
Europe, including 1500 members of its youth division, OUN-M had
1200-1500 members, also including its youth division, and the Lebed
group had about 100 members.[3]
Another indicator of the relative size of the Bandera and Lebed group
is that when they split, at the Mittenwald conference in August 1948,
Lebed's group constituted about 20 of the nearly 150 delegates.[4] The
largest party of Ukrainians who had come from Central and Eastern
Ukraine, i.e., from the Ukrainian SSR in its pre-1939 borders, was the
Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party (URDP) led by Ivan Bahriany.
Kelley estimated that it had 100-120 active members, thus slightly
smaller than the Melnyk nationalist group;[5] Markus estimated that it was about the
same size as the Melnyk group, i.e., with 1200-1500 members.[6]

Formal
Rejection of Totalitarianisms

Nazi Germany had been ignominiously defeated and
its great crimes against humanity exposed to the public. The Soviet
Union had emerged victorious, but all the Ukrainians who chose not to
return there, but to remain in Western Europe, were vehemently
anti-Soviet. The Cold War was beginning, and the concept of
totalitarianism, which identified common features in Nazism and
Communism, was becoming popular. This was the context in which the
postwar Ukrainian emigration began to redefine its politics. It
downplayed as much as possible the cooperation between the Ukrainian
nationalist parties and the Germans and emphasized instead how
Ukrainian nationalists fought both the Germans and the Soviets and how
the Ukrainian nation suffered enormously at the hands of both.

The OUN-M spoke of "millions of victims who
perished at the criminal hands of the red and black totalisms
[мільйонів жертв, що впали від злочинних рук чорного і червоного
тоталізмів]."[7] The
OUN-M felt that the totaliarian systems had emerged as a response to
the genuine failings of the democratic system, but "the totalitarian
reaction in all its varieties has demonstrated its frightening
antihuman character and so has revealed itself in the role of a false
antithesis of the socio-political crisis of our life today [тоталітарна
реакція у всіх своїх різновидностях показала свою застршаючу
антилюдянність і, тим самим, розкрила себе в ролі фалшивої антитези
соціяльно-політичної кризи нинішнього життя]."[8]

The URDP made even more consistent use of
anti-totalitarian rhetoric. Ivan Bahriany spoke of fascism and
Communism as "twins [близнюки]," "the two last totalitarian
antidemocratic systems [двох останніх тоталітарних антидемократичних
систем]." Ukrainians had fought both, "putting an equal sign between
the two systems because of their actions [поставивши між цими двома
системами знак рівності по їх ділах]." "The repudiation of the one
totalitarian system, built on the principle of class hatred and
violence, is in the same measure a repudiation of the related system
built on the principle of violence and race hatred [Заперечення однієї
тоталітарної системи, збудованої на принципі класової зненависті і
насильства, є в однаковій мірі запереченням і спорідненої системи,
збудованої на принципі насильства і зненависті расової]."[9] He
defined the political course [політичний курс] of his party as based on
two theses: opposition to Communism and to reaction, the latter
identified with "the recidivists of creeping fascism [рецидиви
повзучого фашизму]" (he meant the Galician nationalists).[10]
This reflected the views prevalent in the homeland: "A characteristic
feature of the entire population of Ukraine is a colossal, repressed,
but implacable hatred to the Bolshevik totalitarian regime, on the one
hand, and to fascism in all its manifestation, even the memory of it,
on the other [Характерною рисою всього населення України є колосальна,
затаєна, але непримиренна ненависть до більшовицького тоталітарного
режиму, з одного боку, й до фашизму у всіх його проявах, навіть у самій
пам"яті -- з другого]."[11]
He was deeply convinced that "our people in the Fatherland, having
experienced totalitarian enslavement in all its modern variants [наш
народ на Батьківщині, переживши тоталітарне поневолення у всіх його
модерних варіантах]" had developed a "healthy immunity and resistance
[здорового імунітету й відпорності]" to it.[12]

Holding
the Line

The party that was, at least at this time, the
least ready to denounce totalitarianism was the group of nationalists
led by Bandera. Experienced conspirators, they seized control of the
most important positions in the displaced-persons camps. They used
these to raise funds and to consolidate their position as the dominant
political force among the Ukrainians in Western Europe. They were
reluctant to share power. Their top leadership had spent from 1941
until 1944 in German concentration camps and prisons and remained to
some extent frozen in the authoritarian doctrines of the early stages
of the war.

It was because of their dominance that the OUN-M
made a point of denouncing one-party rule,[13] since that one party would obviously
have been the OUN-B.

At the 1948 conference at which the Lebed group
was excluded from the OUN-B, the loyal followers of Bandera declared
that the correct principles of the Organization remained "unity,
monolithicity, and revolutionary discipline [єдинства, монолітности і
революційної дисциплінованости]" and not the "discussion-club democracy
[клюбово-дискусійною демократичністю]" advocated by the dissidents.[14] The
OUN-B also remained true to the principles of revolutionary centralism
-- once a decision had been made by the competent authorities, it had
to be followed by all members of the Organization without question.[15]

Kelley's report to the US Army, which seems to
have relied heavily on information from Mykola Lebed, described the
confrontation at the Mittenwald congress as follows:

During the Congress Bandera and Stetsko attacked
Lebid and Hrynioch as opportunists who had secured leadership of UHVR
[Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council] for personal reasons and were
seeking to split OUNR [OUN-B] and UHVR. Stetsko said that the aim of
the OUNR was to create a free independent state by forming a united
strong party led by one man. Hrynioch declared that the UHVR was not
created by Bandera and Stetsko but by the people in the homeland. These
people rejected one-man government and one-party system as well as
party terrorism and any type of political monopoly. The fighting people
of the homeland were not prepared to accept Bandera as a dictator.[16]

In a letter to an old friend, Orest Lisynets'kyi
in Brazil, Lebed had this to say about the Bandera group's efforts to
be the single dominant force in the Ukrainian emigration: "People don't
want to realize that tomorrow they are going to have to pay plenty for
this, just like we had to pay in 1941 and subsequent years for an
unhealthy politics and conception [Люде не хочуть усвідомити собі, що
завтра прийдеться за це дорого платити, як платили ми в 1941 р. і
дальших роках за нездорову політику і концепцію]."[17] (The unhealthy politics and conception
refer to OUN's early orientation on Hitler's Germany.)

Myroslav Yurkevych has summarized Bandera's
position: "For Bandera and his associates in the OUN-B, democracy meant
competition among various political currents and the victory of one,
representing the majority of the population. The OUN was conceived as a
vanguard party which interpreted and executed the popular will. This
was democracy on the totalitarian model, though Bandera would never
have called it that."[18]

Problematic
Democracy

Although the OUN-M explicitly rejected
totalitarianism, it did not want to replace it with democracy. A member
of the OUN-M leadership, Yurii Blokhyn (pseud. Boiko), explained how
Ukrainian nationalism differed from totalitarianism:

Totalitarianism, with all the characteristics
that are presently included in the concept, is essentially foreign to
Ukrainian nationalism. Nationalism does not know the police
regimentation of creativity, it seeks its power in reliance on the
people, not in violence, and it is inclined always to guarantee the
right of expression of thought opposed to its own tendencies, and it is
ready to apply dictatorial methods only against the activity of alien
national forces and blind anarchy.[19]

But nationalism was not democratic either. It
had, Blokhyn said, broken decisively with "the demoliberal
understanding of the concept of the nation[демоліберальним розумінням
поняття нації]."[20]

The theses of the OUN-M's ideological
conference, held in June-July 1948, spoke clearly against democracy.
They blamed democratic tolerance for allowing Communism and other
totalitarianisms to undermine societies.[21] They explicitly rejected Rousseau and
the concept of natural rights.[22]
They rejected totalitarianism, but wanted no "sick partyism [хоробливе
партійництво]" to have influence on Ukrainian politics.[23]
Instead of democracy, they put forward the notion of a
"nation-authoritative state [народовладна держава]," which incorporated
and modified some democratic principles. For example, there would be
equality before the law, but limited by the interests of the Ukrainian
nation, and freedom of expression could exist "in culturally and
socially appropriate limits [в культурно і соціяльно доцільних межах]."[24]

The leading theoretician of democracy in the
Lebed group was Lev Rebet. He supported pluralism, but his
understanding of democracy emphasized the mobilization of the demos, of the people [народ], rather than democratic
institutions and the rule of law.[25]

Ivan Bahriany was a vocal proponent of
democracy. He saw the victory of democracy as part of a dialectical
movement, an "implacable [невблаганний]" historical process.[26] But
this victory required a new revolution, and Bahrianyi named his program
and his movement "revolutionary democracy." He too had nothing to say
about developing institutions and the rule of law. His concept of
democracy was oriented on "the multimillion masses of... peasants and
workers [багатомільйонних мас...селянства і робітництва]" who, he said,
constitute 99 percent of Ukraine's population. "Their desires and their
aspirations will determine the political character of tomorrow's
Ukraine [Їхні прагнення і їхні стремління визначатимуть устроєвий
характер завтрашньої України]."

...This is democracy in the authentic meaning of
the word, authentic rule by the people. This is social orderliness.
This is political liberty and safety from violence and terror. In a
word, this is that order "without serf and master," which the great
Shevchenko already predicted....[27]

This was, of course, a very populist vision of
democracy, and one that could easily be criticized as ultimately
compatible with a form of totalitarianism.

Mimicry
of Democracy

In 1947 Ivan Bahriany complained that the
Bandera nationalists were engaging in "political mimicry, masking
themselves under democracy, but not changing their reactionary essence
[політичної мімікрії, маскуючись під демократію, але не змінивши своєї
реакційної суті]."[28] A
year earlier he had noted that the nationalist camp was trying to
repudiate its heritage of xenophobia, antisemitism, voluntarism,
leaderism [вождизм], and antidemocratism, but "not by overcoming these
things, but by assuring us that they had not existed [не переборюючи
їх, а запевняючи, що їх і не було]."[29]
Similar statements were made also by Rebet.[30]

Perhaps the most successful practitioner of
political mimicry and rewriting history to suit the new democractic
mood was Lebed. Lebed had been working with American intelligence since
at least 1947,[31] and
the democratic rhetoric of his group seemed to have more to do with the
politics of their patrons than with any deep-seated change of
convictions.[32]
Lebed's group published document collections that doctored historical
texts to eliminate pro-German and antisemitic statements.[33]
Lebed left his papers to the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Many
documents in that collection have been retyped, with no originals
preserved, and the years 1941-42 seem hardly to exist, since these were
the years of OUN's closest involvement with the Germans.

Xenophobia
and Antisemitism

Although their language certainly became more
temperate in the postwar years, Bahriany still charged the nationalists
with retaining their xenophobia and antisemitism. He contrasted the
West Ukrainian nationalists with the population of Central and Eastern
Ukraine: "...A characteristic trait of the population of Ukraine...is
the absence of national hatred to the degree that some Ukrainian
apostles of hatred and xenophobia would like [...характерна риса
населення України...-- це відсутність національного ненанисництва такої
міри, як того хотіли б деякі українські апостоли ненанисництва й
ксенофобія]."

What was really remarkable about the URDP's
stand on antisemitism was the attention it paid to reeducating its
sympathizers about Jews. In 1946-47 the party newspaper Ukrains'ki
visti reported favorably on
Jews' desire to establish their own state in Palestine and identified
the Arabs as Soviet clients;[34]
it painted the USSR as antisemitic[35]
and Jewish activists as anti-Communist.[36] This philosemitic stance was obviously
intended as an antidote to the Nazi and collaborationist propaganda to
which Ukrainians had been exposed during the war.

Self-Analysis

A characteristic feature of the emigration's
political thinking in the early postwar period was reticence to discuss
the failings of one's own camp. Bahriany frequently criticized the
nationalists for their fascist outlook and methods, but he and his
Eastern Ukrainian sympathizers were also criticized as having been
infected by Bolshevism, materialism, and denationalization.[37]
Perhaps these mutual accusations inhibited frank discussion of internal
issues.

Only rarely did self-critical passages appear in
the writings of this period. Very early on, and in a piece directed to
the outside world, Bahriany mentioned in passing "the type of person"
[тип людини] that was formed in Soviet Ukraine: "a frightened person,
suspicious, close-mouthed, and inclined to fatalism [людини заляканої,
підозрідої, мовчазної і фатально настроєної]."[38] In his articles written in the rest of
the 1940s he never returned to this theme. Instead, he consistently
reproduced an upbeat image of Soviet Ukrainian peasants and workers,
immune to totalitarianism, who would transform Ukraine through a
democratic revolution. The social psychology projected in these texts
does not differ much from the one inherited from Soviet propaganda.

Economics

Although the transitology of the 1990s and 2000s
has placed a major emphasis on economic issues, generally linking free
politics with a free market, Ukrainian political thinkers of the late
1940s did not devote much attention to this sphere.

Bahriany treated economic issues more frequently
than did the representatives of other camps. After some initial
hesitation, Bahriany decided that his party would not advocate
socialism.[40]
Nonetheless, he consistently opposed the restoration of capitalism.[41]
After the democratic revolution, the people of Ukraine could establish
the socio-economic order they wanted, but his party would argue
"against the restoration of the landlord-capitalist order [проти
реставрації поміщицько-капіталістичного ладу]."[42] There should be no return of an
exploitative order, and collective and state farms should be dissolved.[43]

The Melnyk nationalists, who retained
corporatist ideals, were also anticapitalist. One of the problems of
democracy was that the kind of liberty it championed "imposed the yoke
of capitalism on the workers and constituted an evil irony to the very
idea of liberty [така свобода накинула ярмо капітализму на робітництво
і була злою іронією до самої ідеї свободи]."[44]

Conclusions

This survey demonstrates how difficult it was
for the first post-totalitarian generation of Ukrainians to move beyond
the worldviews in which they had been immersed in the 1930s and early
1940s. They were still not well integrated into a different set of
circumstances. Indeed, they were for most of the late 1940s still in
refugee camps in devastated, as yet unreconstructed Germany. Their
experience of non-totalitarian alternatives was minimal.

They were in a disoriented position, not quite
defeated, but certainly not victors. They were cut off from their
homeland, although they were not ready to admit it. They took courage
from what they heard about a nationalist insurgency in Western Ukraine
and hoped for a revolution. The OUN looked forward to a national
revolution, which they believed would solve all Ukraine's problems. The
Bahrianyi group looked forward to a democractic revolution, in which
they also invested unrealistically large hopes.

They were for the most part men about 40 years
of age. Andrii Melnyk was the oldest at 58 in 1948. Boiko-Blokhyn,
Bandera, and Lebed were all 39. Bahriany was 42. All of them, except
for Boiko-Blokhyn, had spent years in prison.

If this study has demonstrated the shortcomings
of how these individuals and the movements they headed dealt with their
totalitarian legacies, it is not intended to diminish their stature. It
is rather intended as a lesson in how hard it is to rebuild thoughts
and attitudes, let alone social structures.

[31] Jeffrey Burds, The
Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944-1948, The Carl Beck
Papers in Russian & East European Studies, 1505 (Pittsburgh: The
Center for Russian and East European Studies, a program of the
University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh,
2001), 16-17.

[33] For example:
Zlochyny komunistychnoi Moskvy v Ukraini v liti 1941 roku (New York: Proloh,
1960). I have carefully compared all the texts in this volume that were
taken from the wartime newspaper Krakivs'ki visti with the originals
in the newspaper. The originals were vehemently antisemitic, but the
offending passages have all been eliminated or modified in the document
collection.